Notes
by CarawynO
Summary: Facing seven months of separation, Faramir takes steps to ensure that Eowyn won't be haunted by dark memories while walking the halls of Meduseld. Originally intended to be between chapters 3 and 4 of Winning the White Lady, but it has such a different style I decided to make it a story of it's own. No need to read one to understand the other.


Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, nor do I intend to make any sort of profit from this story. I'm only borrowing them to fill in what I think could have happened in the time gaps left by the Professor.

This was originally to be between chapters 3 and 4 of Winning the White Lady, but it turned out to be very different in style, so I'm making it a stand alone. The intention was to imply ways that Grima had 'haunted her steps,' and how a man of honor might go about countering those actions.

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Faramir found that there was a world of difference between courting and being troth-plighted. Indeed, if he had understood the jokes and less than subtle hints from the riders that he had befriended during the ride from Minas Tirith, he was in fact married in the eyes of the Rohirrim.. Apparently many in Rohan never had a formal wedding, and the public statement of their intention to live as husband and wife was deemed sufficient, especially for those living in the outlying small towns and villages. It had, however, been made very clear, by both Eomer and Imrahil, that this was not to be the case for Faramir and Eowyn. Faramir himself would not have had it otherwise. He knew all too well how vicious the gossip at the Gondorian court could be, and would give no opportunity for any to sharpen the tongues at Eowyn's expense.

He would take advantage of his new status in only one way.

Ever since the night he had first heard of Grima, Faramir had wished for nothing as much as to help Eowyn shake the hold of those final shadows that haunted her. During the months they were parted, he had spent many sleepless hours pacing in his office while thinking of her, hoping that she was able to find peace in the halls that had become such a terror for her. After he had been invited to Edoras he used those hours to plan what he would do. In the end, the solution seemed obvious, and simple; he would create new memories with her in those places another had violated, and trust that their love would be stronger than the poison.

As her husband to be, he was permitted to walk her to her rooms when she retired for the evening, though he knew Eomer closely monitored how long he was gone from the main hall. While Faramir never entered her rooms, he would often pull her into the shadowed corners of the halllway for stolen kisses, making sure that he was the one against the wall so that she would not feel trapped as she had been before.

If she passed him in an open area while carrying a tray or basket, he would move to block her way and then take it from her, allowing his hands to linger over hers a moment longer than was needed as he did so before turning to follow her to where she had been going. He knew many of the men likely thought him foolish, helping a woman with her chores this way, but he cared only about the way she smiled at him.

He once blocked her into Windfola's stall as she groomed the stallion, and claimed she would not be freed until she'd paid the forfeit of a kiss. She merely looked at him with her eyebrows slightly raised, then laughed as she put the brushes away before coming over to him and reaching up to kiss him over the half door to the stall.

It did not take her long to figure out what he was attempting to do, and her gratitude made it all worthwhile. If anything, it encouraged him to try all the harder to create happy memories to balance and block the dark ones.

Faramir had also made a point of getting to know Ghenny, Eowyn's chief maid, for he would need her help for the rest of his plan to work. Younger even than Eowyn, and hopelessly romantic, Ghenny became a staunch ally when he told her what he had in mind.

Before leaving Minas Tirith he had written a stack of notes, all of them short, and most consisting of only the three words he would most miss being able to say to her. These he intended to leave behind in Meduseld for the long months of separation between September and March. There would be letters of course; he intended to write at least a little each day and to send them with each messenger Aragorn sent. But these notes would have a different purpose; to be his whispered words while he was miles away.

He gave Eowyn a pair of hair combs for her birthday in September, gold inlaid with sapphires and diamonds, and he pinned the matching broach to his mother's mantle, to be found when the weather turned cold. Beneath the broach was one of the simple notes he had written.

Another note was tucked into a book of love poems that was left behind one of the cushions on the window seat in her chambers; Ghenny had told him that was where she liked to sit in the evenings before retiring, so he knew she would find it eventually.

One was slipped in among her carefully sorted and labeled seed packets, which she had told him she intended to plant in the gardens in the spring, to be her last gift to her brother and his household.

She had little time for working in the houses of healing, but he knew that she went when she could, and so slipped a note into the pocket of the apron she would wear while there.

She had shown him a ledger in which she was keeping a list of all the preparations that needed to be completed for their wedding, and for her move to Ithilien. Ghenny distracted her one evening, and he claimed the last page for his own.

In all he hid about ten notes himself, in places where he knew they would be found at random moments. Several others he left with merchants who were commonly in the marketplace, asking that they be delivered with a small gift on a particular date; when the merchants learned of his plan they quickly agreed to help him, especially the women.

A pair of fine, fur lined riding gloves, in the style she preferred, would be delivered on the morning of the first snowfall.

A small but finely carved box, such as a woman of Gondor would use to store her jewelry, would be delivered at the turn of the year.

A fine chain with a small pendant of gold, shaped like a running horse such as was shown on the standards of Rohan, would be delivered to her on the morning she was to ride to Minas Tirith.

The rest he left with Ghenny, to be left in obvious places on random days, at least once per week. They would be found under her hairbrush in the morning, under her pillow in the evening, under her goblet at the dinner table, in a pocket, tucked in a shoe, anywhere that Ghenny could think of where it would be sure to be found quickly.

He would not see her reaction to his notes, but it eased his heart to know that she would be constantly reminded of his love.


End file.
